Qi lai! Qi lai! Qi lai!

Every evening before the news I get to watch any one of these commercials:

(Actually there are a few more, but this was all I could find on YouTube.)

My intuition is that since they are being broadcast everyday for an indefinite period of time, they must have some effects on people, if not in the short run, then long term. Lazarsfeld had reassured us, though, that propaganda like these are only minimally effective, merely serving to reinforce and activate latent predispositions. What is certain, nonetheless, is that they do contain ideological messages.

One reoccurring theme in these clips is the portrayal of the national hero. In these two, the feeling created is that everybody – from the construction workers to white-collar professionals – is a national hero, because the message is that if you do your part you are making a big contribution to the country. There are two others I’ve seen which, in the beginning, even have the heroes of the national heroes, cyclist Wong Kam Po and Secretary for Justice Wong Yan Long, make the opening statement (“Fulfilling the duties of our roles, allowing Hong Kong to utilize its advantages, is making a contribution to the country.”) And of course a fixture at the end of every one of these propaganda is the hero of all heroes, the national flag.

By the way, where have all the poor people gone?

Iron Chef

Late last night I was watching a rerun of Iron Chef – this very episode actually:

And I noticed the use of semiotics in this show. Notice the shiny uniforms, the wide angle and eye-level shots of the commentators and judges, the high angle shots of the audience as a mass, and the close-up, low angle shots of the Iron Chefs, especially of Rokusaburo Michiba. But apart from that, Iron Chef is a great show!

The semiotics of milk

Lately, I’ve been seeing this commercial being broadcast on TV for Mengniu Dairy’s Milk Deluxe which I find quite amusing (in a campy sort of way). Normally, we associate milk with health, but Mengniu tries to redefine the symbolism by portraying its product as a high-end consumer good worthy of consumption only by people with class. The effect is stronger – and therefore funnier – in the Hong Kong version which runs longer and also includes the part where the guy turns down a glass of champagne. Unfortunately, I’ve only been able to find the mainland version.

(Click on the image for the video)

Western media bias?

A few weeks ago, following the unblocking of BBC’s English language material in China, I came across an article in BBC which reported that the Chinese people were critical of the Western media’s, including BBC’s, coverage of China, such as the recent riots in Lhasa. Partly as a consequence this sentiment, we saw in China last week a wave of protests against the French supermarket chain Carrefour.

According to the Marxist school and political economy approach, one of the problems with contemporary journalism is that no matter how professional a news agency tries to be, it will always be biased towards the rich and powerful. If this assumption is correct, and provided that the Western media is indeed biased, then perhaps what we see is the Marxist theory being applied on a global scale – the world’s dominant media infused with the values representative of Western civilization – comprised of the most powerful nations in the world – and marginalizing weaker competing views (such as China’s).